Andrew Ferguson dot NET

After months of searching, I think I have finally found next the computer
that I will use. After years of loyalty to Toshiba, and even some to Best Buy, I’m
changing horses in midstream…hopefully. While at Costco, I saw this great little Tablet PC
made by Averatec. Notebookreview.com
calls it a “creative and exciting design merging a mobile notebook
computer and a tablet PC into a single ultra-portable form
factor.  As a notebook, this compact unit offers all of the
features and functionality that mobile users expect, while also incorporating
advanced handwriting and speech recognition technologies for comprehensive
functioning as a tablet PC. The affordably priced C3500 offers a

built-in DVD+CD-RW combination drive and wireless networking
capabilities.  All this and a starting price of only
$1299.99.”

$1300?!?!? That’s incredible for a Tablet PC. Before this I was looking a
Toshiba that cost over $2200 and before that, an Acer that cost about $1400.
This beast has:

• Processor: Mobile AMD� Athlon� XP-M 2200+ w/PowerNow!� technology
• Memory: 512 MB DDR333 (1GB maximum memory)
• Hard Drive: 60 GB, 9.5 mm thin
• Optical Drive: DVD/CD-RW Combo Drive Burner
• Ports:

• (4) USB 2.0
• (1) VGA 15-pin port
• (1) Audio Out
• (1) Microphone In
• (1) TV Out (S-Video)
• (1) RJ-11
• (1) RJ-45
• (1) Type II PC Card/Card Bus slot

• 802.11g wireless
• 10/100 Mbit network LAN
• 56k data/fax modem

• 11.6�x9.8�x1.57�
• 5.5 lbs. with standard battery

Anyways, I’m way excited now. I’ve been waiting for something like to this
come along for quite some time now. The Toshiba that I was looking at just
dropped a few hundred dollars in price, so I’m thinking that the next generation
of Tablet PC’s is on it’s way out and that this Averatec marks the begining of
that transition.

My Tablet PC isn’t feeling very well. It refuses to finish booting Windows. After some messing around, I found out that a device driver, d346bus.sys, is not loading well. A quick google search indicates that I’m not the only one with problem. However, I don’t have any way to fix the problem at the moment. I tried downloading Knoppix, a bootable version of Linux, however, it only has read NTFS support and I actually need to write too. Then I headed down to the Computing Center, no help there. All the machines run W2K and the guy helping me didn’t have his WinXP disk with him, he will on Thursday though. I would use my WinXP disk, but I don’t have one because Microsoft forces companies who distribute OEM versions of their software to encrypt it so that it can only be restored on the machine it was designed for. Ergo, the OEM just makes a Norton Ghost image and creates a front end to ensure it will only load on the authorized computer and BAM…I’m up the river without a paddle. So, for the next few days I get to use a pen and paper (*gasp*).

So I’ve been using the Averatec Tablet PC for about 6 weeks now and I’m fed-up. Averatec has a great design with great features at a great price that almost gives everyone else a great run for their money, except the fact that it’s buggy. Really buggy. I can do any harddrive or processor intensive things without the motherboard overheating. The mouse also flips out all the time making it close to impossible to work. So I said, “Screw it, I’m getting a Dell Toshiba.” (Dell actually doesn’t have a Tablet PC, neither does IBM, supprisingly.)

So I got a Toshiba. It’s a beauty:

• Integrated Intel PRO/Wireless (802.11b/g)
• Intel Pentium M 745 Processor (1.80GHz, 2MB L2 Cache, 400MHz FSB)
• 80GB HDD (5400 rpm)
• 12″ Polysilicon SXGA+ Display (1400 x 1050)
• 512MB PC2700 DDR333 SDRAM (256MB x 2)
• Microsoft Windows XP Tablet Edition

PC Magazine also gave it 4/5 stars and the members gave it 4.5/5, it was TechTV’s (now called G4techTV) “Pick of the Week” and it was Laptop Magazines Editors Choice. This will be sweet.

I trying to figure out the easiest way to add Bluetooth to my Toshiba M200 Tablet PC. There’s an intersting article over at http://www.geekzone.co.nz/content.asp?contentid=3816, so I’m looking at that. I really want to the device to be completely hidden though. Any comments would be helpful.

Toshiba recently released the next generation of their award-winning Tablet PC. Engadget said that it is called the Toshiba Tecra M4. It follows on the heels of the Satellite R10/15 Tablet PC and Protege M200 (which is the one I have). The specs on this make me oogle a lot:

• 14-inch, 1400 x 1050 display
• 1.73GHz Pentium M processor
• either a 64MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 6200 TE or 128MB 6600 TE graphics card
• 512MB of DDR2 RAM
• a 60GB hard drive
• built-in 802.11b/g WiFi
• a DVD+R drive

I would considering getting this laptop, except that I don’t have the money, so I can’t. It’s also significantly bigger than my current laptop. However, I would probably be able to play games such as Counter-Strike: Source on it. I would also want to beef up the RAM to a gig and the hard drive to 80GB, however it appears that Toshiba isn’t taking custom orders yet.

I’m actually not quite sure how I found this link. I think it was in one the handful of blogs I read. In any event, Microsoft has released a free Education Pack for the Tablet PC. Incremental Blogger reports that it comes with:

* Equation Writer–Converts your handwritten equations to typewritten images.
* GoBinder Lite–Keep track of your schedule with this planner.
* Hexic - MSN game that’s Tablet enhanced
* Ink Flash Cards–Create flash cards to help you learn facts or study for an exam.
* Send to Microsoft Office OneNote 2003–Print web pages, pictures and other files to OneNote so you can annotate them.

I actually remember looking for a flash card program last year and not finding one I liked. So I’m pumped to try it out. I’m also looking forward to seeing what the Go Binder Lite is all about. I currently use Outlook because it lets me sync with my SPOT watch. I currently use the Windows Journal program to markup files, so it should be nice to keep them all in OneNote.

The price also isn’t too bad either, can’t really beat $0.00.

From The Student Tablet PC:

In the course of four semesters, assuming a tablet costs ~$200 more than a similarly equipted notebook, the tablet will break-even or save you money. This is not including productivity gains.

Let’s do some math. In the course of 2 years taking an average or 4 classes or so per semester:

• 4 semester x 4 Spiral Notebooks, $6 x 4 = $24
• Pens/Pencils/Highlighters, $5 x 4 = $20
• 4 semseters x 4 Binders, $12 x 4 = $48
• 2 years of binder separators tabs and folders, $102 Ink cartriges of printing, $70
• Loose paper (printing and lined), $10
• 2 years x Quality academic planner, $20

Grand total after 2 years: $202

You can see the numbers I used are about average, so anything high quality or extra will just increase the cost. If you take more than 4 classes, that’s just more to spend.

I’ll probaby spen $40 on papers, pens, printer ink over 2 years and I take 5-6 classes per semester.

So if you’re looking for a laptop and X’ed tablet PCs because of the price jump, now’s time to take another look.

I would argue that you could save even more. How? Books. You can easily spend $600 on books per semester. Yes, you can resell them at the end and maybe get half of what you spent on them back. At least at my school, there are copies of the books floating around school, either the library has them or the department has them. If that fails, you can either borrow them from a friend or, as a last resort, buy them from the bookstore and return them when you’re done scanning. In any event, just go borrow it for a few hours and go on a massive scanning binge. Voila! Scanned books in whatever format you choose. Personally, I would go for the Microsoft Document Image format. It’s pretty portable and you can mark it up.

At this point, I may have convinced you that you can save money, but how much money can you save? I’ll be honest, I dropped about $2200 on my Tablet. But that’s the price for getting one early in the game. Toshiba sells their Satellite R10 for a mere $1,189. Granted, it’s bottom of the line. But it’s a Tablet and it works. Now personally, I would spring for the Toshiba Tecra M4 ($1,614) or even my Portege M200, now selling for a lowly $1715. Spending $600/semester, you can “pay it off” in under three semesters (1.5 years)!

On Laura’s suggestion, I went to Circle K yesterday. Ken Melby [facebook link] was there and he had his IBM Lenovo ThinkPad X41 Tablet PC. My immediate impression was “way cool.” It’s a little smaller and a little lighter than my Toshiba Portege M200. Both screens are 12.1″, measured on the diagonal, however Ken’s screen resolution is 1024×768, compared to my massive 1400×1050 (my only gripe being that it’s a non-standard resolution). Lenovo gets cool points for their fingerprint scanner but looses some points for not including a Windows Key. What’s up with that? I use my Windows Key quite a bit and would definitely miss it on a Lenovo.

I’m not looking for a new computer (and I won’t be getting one for at least two or three more years), but it’s good to know that Lenovo has a good design in hand. However, I’m still waiting to see if Apple is going to join the Tablet market. And now that Apple has gone Intel, I’m even more excited to see if Intel’s codename Robson project will deliver what it claims to do: cold boot in just seconds. Now that will be awesome!

In person, I’ve always raved about my Tablet PC. However, for what ever reason, I don’t really talk about it on my site very much. I think it mostly has to do with the fact that I view my site as more of a place to let you know what’s going on in my life, not really as a place to convince others to do what I do. One of the blogs I enjoy reading is Student Tablet PC, and now I’m a writer for them. I literally sent an email to Tracy and a few hours later, I had an online interview of sorts with Tracy and her cohort, Trevor. The interrogation interview last the better part of an hour using AIM chat. We talked about everything from my thoughts on Tablets, to what what I’d like to see in the future, school loads, how many credits we could take at our respective schools, and so much more. Tracy and Trevor really seem like some cool people and I think I’m going to enjoy working with them. I digress. They’re going to test me out for a few weeks and see how things go and I really couldn’t be more excited.

I really enjoyed writing for The Oredigger last year, but it really wasn’t the best venue for me. And if you were to go look back at what I wrote about, you would see that they were, for the most part all technology related. So hopefully, STP will be a better fit. I’m not quite sure how often I plan to contribute, however I’m hoping for at least once or twice a week. So stop by Student Tablet PC and check it out.

On my way through security, I saw a guy (I’ll call him Ben) who had a ViewSonic ViewPad 1000. I almost took a picture of it, but decided against it because TSA doesn’t like people taking pictures on their turf.

I asked Ben about it. The conversation went something like this:

Andrew, “Is that a Tablet PC?”

Ben, “Yea, it is.”

Andrew, “That’s cool. What kind is it?”

Ben, “It’s a ViewPad.”

Andrew, “Do you like it?”

Ben, “Yea!”

Andrew, “How old is it?”

Ben, “It’s a little old. 900MHz, 30GB Hard Drive, 512 Ram, WiFi. But it’s solid.”

Andrew, “That’s cool.”

Ben, “ViewSonic is actually refurbishing them now, too.”

Andrew, “Really?”

Ben, “Yup.”

Andrew, “Yea, I have an M200, Toshiba M200.”

Ben, “Cool.”

Andrew, “Yup. Well, thanks!”

In case anybody cares, Ben was having his bag wiped down for a mass spectrometer test (because everyone knows what that is;-)).

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